Is she still frightened that the gang is looking for her? “In a way, yes…” and then she pauses. “And in a way, no,” she continues. “It is children they scare, not grown women, and I am a grown woman now. So, yes, I could stand up to them if they turned up on my door, but that’s not really what it is about. I don’t want to be known for the rest of my life as the girl who was abused. It’s not shame. I know now it wasn’t my fault – though for a long time I thought it was. It is just that I don’t want to be labelled a victim. I’m determined not to become a victim.”

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The Australian porn thing — Holy crap! And the Brits say that we Americans are conservative and repressed. At least we can distinguish between children and grown women with small titties.

As for the chivalry article, I don’t find a man giving up his seat to me — a young, fit woman — gallant. I find it insulting. I mean, it’s a nice gesture to offer if I’m wearing 3-inch heels, but when it crosses into insistence, that’s just rude. I spend most of my work day sitting down. I prefer to stand on the train, partly because it leaves seats free for those who want or need them. And treating every woman as though she needs to be sacrificed for and protected is not “valuing” us. It’s implying that we can’t take care of our own damn selves. Back off, buddy! [/rant]

I now love the phrase “utopian sausage-fest” and will use it when appropriate.

Whole Foods — I’m all for employers encouraging employee health, but determining their level of discount based upon a small number of criteria (which may violate doctor/patient confidentiality…) stinks of discrimination. Some people have naturally higher blood pressure. BMI is so irrepresentative of actual health as to be almost useless. And, as the article points out, it’s more difficult to get fit in the first place if you have to buy cheaper foods.

I didn’t see the Australian policy as being about repression so much as taking media content research and censorship too far without considering context. Though adult porn also increases aggression. And I could be wrong about the Australians.

I’m a huge Michelle Rodriguez fan. She’s a natural athlete in a world of pretty women who go to the gym. If I didn’t vote for Beyonce for Wonder Woman, I’d vote for her for sure.

BMI is ridiculous. My scales told me this morning that I’m at 43% body fat, and my BMI is around 25. My mother’s has been around 29-30 as long as I can remember, and she’s healthier than I am.

When did Valerie’s hair get so wavy? I thought she had an afro. Did I miss something? (Ok, yeah, afros are so out of date, but how about something a little less white-looking?)

I haven’t seen, and probably won’t bother to see, Avatar, but the Michelle Rodriguez article made great reading. If only they had gone that route, I’d be eager to see it then. And this – “She would come to see that those who would colonize Pandora are the same as those who had colonized her ancestors” – would have allowed the same kind of “join the native against the coloniser” story without the chance for the white audience to identify with a white turncoat and thus enjoy back-door absolution. Plus Anenome’s right, Michelle Rodriguez rocks, and it would be cool to see her get to the be the proper hero of a film like this.

To the Australia article I can only say… Holy crap. It’s not often you get ludicrous and offensive so seamlessly blended together.

The first thing I thought was, well then they should ban SHAVED women too, tho that would probably exclude 99.9% of the porn from their ‘acceptable’ list. Small breasts are natural, explain the majority of the male population who have spent their whole adult life wanking over pictures of unnaturally bald (i.e. pre-prepubescent looking) pussy.

I don’t understand that bus chivalry thing. But it’s not even an important piece, the only reason people have picked up on it is because it’s from China and everyone is talking about China. It’s just an opinion piece, and the only response it creates is ‘that’s not fair, NO FAIR YOU CAN’T DO THAT’. It makes sexist men very angry cos they think someones gonna ‘force’ them to give up their seat (even tho it’s just an opinion piece), I guess they’d know the power of peer-pressure affecting societal unspoken rules more than anyone, it’s been used against women enough.
I have no problem with someone giving me their seat, but it will ALWAYS be their choice, no one’s gonna make them.
A negative thing I can say about a man being ‘chivalrous’ is that chivalry gives with one hand and takes with the other, while it expects a man to perform certain rituals it in turn expects a woman to perform corresponding rituals. Like ‘hey I just bought you a drink you better laugh, on cue, at all my jokes, that’s the way this works’

In Germany, the new child porn laws also mention that the subject “just has to appear to be underage”, so I guess small breasts, school girl outfits etc. are at least questionable. Mind, I think most judges wouldn’t convict on that, but still some might. And the law also covers drawings, though it’s not clear that it applies to erotica (as in written stories). And I guess Japanese hentai are fine, then, because the twelve-year-olds therein often have humongous breasts.

As for female ejaculation being abhorrent… well, typical. It’s probably just lumped under golden showers, and that’s supposed to be abhorrent, too. Personally, I think as long as nobody is harmed, anybody can get a kick out of whatever they want, and as soon as we start having politicians declare what’s legal and what isn’t based on their personal feelings… well that is a slippery slope to walk on.

They’re not, tho, is the thing. I had tig ol bitties by the time I was ten, and I certainly wasn’t the only busty middle schooler in my neighborhood. The kind of image of childhood they’re protecting has some serious raced and classed implications that squick me the hell out.

I’m glad you guys covered the Australian porn thing, because I wasn’t sure where to start. All I could think was, “But that’s not actually going to help prevent pedophilia.” I could get on board with a law that says if you’re simulating kiddie porn with older actors, it’s still kiddie porn and all the same legal consequences apply. But this both falls short of that and exceeds it in random directions at the same time.

I’m flabbergasted by the porn thing. Funnily enough, I have a sister who’s seven years younger than me and by the time she was thirteen and I was twenty, she had bigger boobs then me… which somehow made her more adult than I?

Which makes me think that by implication, does that mean that if small breasts = child-like regardless of age, then big breasts = adult regardless of age?

The Independent article is horrifying, not least because of the mention that domestic sex slavery is getting little police focus. And why is it considered a seperate issue to trafficking, when AFAIK the methods being used are identical?

I believe the logic behind the censorship thing is that not only are creators of porn not allowed to use underage actors, but they can’t use overage actors to PORETRAY underage people, either. So if you have a woman who is obviously in her twenties dressed up as a schoolgirl or who is shaved, that’s fine, ‘cos she looks twentysomething, but if you have an eighteen-year-old with a small build a youthful face who LOOKS twelve (God, pornographers would have LOVED me when I was eighteen :p) then that’s not. I’d guess that this no-A-cup thing is just a really screwy extension of that. I can definitely see that in a case-by-case assessment, an A cup + youthful face = too-young *looking* (even if the girl is over eighteen) but to make a blanket assessment that A cup = too young opens a nasty can of works about age, maturity and sexuality being correlated to breast size.

I know it’s not that new but she totally kicks that dudes arse (not literally) in an interview.
She’s def. a feminist but after being totally feminist she is asked ‘are you a feminist?’ and she replies ‘no, I love men.’
That hurt!.. I still think she was great for the other things she said in the interview but it’s reaaallly sad that feminism is so uncool or misrepresented (like ‘it means you have to hate men’) that modern women don’t want to associate themselves with it.

What interests me about the Australia thing is that I’ve previously heard this reasoning mostly from anti-porn radfems, of the sort who are just as committed to policing others’ sexuality as any right-winger.

Why would a feminist-oriented blog link to Sankaku Complex as news source? They just love to post stories related to rape and abuse of japanese girls and women together with hentai pictures for extra titillation.

Making Trudy the lead in Avatar would have been a much, much better film, if only because Michelle Rodriguez is much, much more watchable than “generic white guy who I never recognize no matter how many movies he turns up in.”

Since I’m a white male between the ages of 15 and 35, this must mean I’m defective somehow. Especially since my list of actors who will motivate me to see a movie regardless of what it is about only includes two white guys (Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti).

Making Trudy the lead in Avatar would have been a much, much better film, if only because Michelle Rodriguez is much, much more watchable than “generic white guy who I never recognize no matter how many movies he turns up in.”

I haven’t seen Avatar, so I can’t offer an informed opinion on the subject of Trudy herself – except inasmuch as the idea posited in the article sounds much more interesting that yet another white man’s journey – but Michelle Rodriguez rocks, and should be a lead more often.

The story about the leaflet brought back memories of being pulled aside on occasion by one of the women running the group and being told that I needed to be “careful” about how I dressed, and “considerate” to the guys in the group,my “brothers in Christ.”. My clothes might have made it “difficult” for these young men to “avoid temptation,” you see. (If I was so “tempting,”by the way, why is it I was rarely asked out by any guys in this group?) I generally wore (not at all tight) t-shirts and jeans, though the t-shirts often had funky things like giant pictures of phoenixes and big glittery butterflies on the front of them (Guess who’s “busty.”)

Also, man the Utah thing! I actually did have a fall at one point in my third trimester, (off of my parents’ front porch step, so it wasn’t that bad), and I was panicked enough as it was. I can’t imagine worrying about whether or not someone would decide that I fell “on purpose,” and therefore deserved jail time! Now, I don’t know what a city jail is like in Utah, but I recently read an article about my local jail, and what a horrible, germ-infested place it is. Yeah, that’s a GREAT place to bring a pregnant woman, ESPECIALLY if your intention is to protect the baby. Not to mention what stress can do to a pregnant woman, and I can imagine that there are few things more stressful than getting arrested.